The chancellor had adjourned the determination of this petition for the installation of telecommunications equipment in a church and for the team vicar and parochial church council to enter into a licence agreement with New Edge Telecommunications (Net) Limited (NET) to maintain, operate and use the equipment (reported at (2013) 15 Ecc LJ 119) in order to receive answers to a number of concerns he had identified in relation to the terms of the licence agreement. The chancellor's concerns centred around the fact that NET was essentially a monopoly purchaser of the right to put telecommunications equipment in churches, such that it was not possible to assess the value of that right in relation to a particular church.
The chancellor received further evidence from the petitioners, including material of particular commercial sensitivity, which sensitivity he was asked to respect in his judgment and allow NET to comment on a draft judgment. The chancellor chose not to view such material, on the basis that his judgment and the reasons for it should be transparent. In granting the faculty sought with minor amendments to the terms of the licence, the chancellor expressed concerns about the basis upon which the size of the licence fee was reached. The licence fee was a fixed standard fee dependent upon the size of the conurbation within which the church was located, with no scope for adjustment to take account of the value of a particular site. Nevertheless, the fact that there were five-yearly upward-only licence fee reviews incorporated in the terms of the licence, which might themselves be used to re-negotiate the licence fee to reflect the value of a particular site, meant that what was proposed was not unreasonable. [RA]
